1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the current invention relate to non-destructive inspection of manufactured parts. More particularly, embodiments of the current invention relate to apparatuses to inspect a curved portion of a manufactured part.
2. Description of the Related Art
Non-destructive inspection involves the examination of parts, often in a production environment, wherein some characteristic of the part is measured to evaluate a certain aspect of the part, such as the quality of construction. As opposed to other techniques to gauge the quality of a part or to find defects, such as cross sectioning, drilling or excising a portion of the part, all of which may destroy the part or at least render the part unusable, non-destructive inspection does not typically harm the part in any way. Often, the methods of non-destructive inspection include scanning a part by transmitting a form of energy, such as ultrasonic waves, at the part and recording the reflected or perhaps refracted energy to form an image or profile of the part. Typically, the scan is performed by rastering or otherwise sweeping a transmitting and receiving sensor or an array of sensors over the surface of the part at a fixed height.
Some parts, such as aircraft components like fuselage frames, shear ties, wing spars, and others, include two or more planar portions that form a “C”, “V”, or “L” shaped bend with a smooth curve therebetween. The radius of curvature of the bend may change from part to part or even within the same part. The shape of the sensor array may be adapted to inspect the curvature, and the sensor array may be swept across the curvature at a certain height in order to perform the inspection. However, maintaining the correct height above the curvature when the radius of curvature changes may be difficult.